Adopted persons...how do you feel when people say your adoptive parents "took you in"?
I am entirely turned off by this. I wasn't some poor little waif wondering the streets like a stray cat that someone decided to take home. I was a child who was eligible for adoption. My adoptive parents SOUGHT OUT a child to adopt, because they WANTED to adopt a child. They didn't just "take me in."
Anyone else?
Just to clarify, my adoptive parents NEVER said this to me. It's just that I hear people in general say this sometimes, including in posts here on Y!A.
CP -- yes, you are right. It really is linked in with the whole "you should be grateful" attitude.
Why not focus on reform and not about what we think someone means? Because of the very reason CP pointed out. Part of reform has to do with the attitudes of the people. The idea that our parents "took us in" goes back to the "just be grateful" attitude.
These attitudes relegate us to a class of persons who ought not be asking for more after someone bothered to take us in. After all, isn't that enough?
Why would anyone with that attitude think that we should have equal rights? We ought to just shut up and be satisfied that someone let us live and took care of us, right?
Wow! Thank you, Phil! I think I probably helped bring in the whole "sought me out" junk by my own sentence that has the word "sought" in it. My sentence, however, was that they sought out to adopt *A* child -- not me in particular. The fact that they ended up with me was not due to "picking me out." It was due to timing, availability and the work of the social worker.
Gersh -- Thank You! You put it so much better than I.